Yesterday, Last Night, This Morning

I still haven't gotten around to finishing my thoughts on that last blog because someone around here has been making life insane. I don't know if that first week of Jacob being 3 was a fluke, a grace period, or what, but this week he's been putting us through hell. I guess it's mostly the temper tantrums, but also the disagreeableness. Everything we say he has to say the opposite. "You have to wear a jacket because it's almost winter and the temperature outside is getting colder," I lecture. "No, it's not almost winter," he fights back. Whatever. Things like that. But it's been about every...little...thing.

On the days that I baby-sit, this adds up to my never sitting down, never having a moment of peace. And by the end of the day I'm convinced that I will never be able to have another child. I know I will someday, but I imagine it's going to be one of those things I just keep putting off longer and longer. Jacob really wants a sibling. A couple months ago he made the suggestion, "Let's get a baby like Evy." And yesterday he asked me, "Is Evy our baby?"

Well, we've been up for about an hour and Jacob is having his 3rd tantrum already. I was about to put a Bob video in so he could watch that and I could have some freaking quiet time already. So when I turned on the TV I saw that Caillou was on PBS. Jacob went for that, but since the show was halfway through, the peace only lasted for 15 minutes. Now it's over and Barney is coming on. I'm giving Jacob a choice: Barney, or the Snowed Under video. He wants Caillou again. "I can't do that, Jacob, I'm sorry," I say calmly, anticipating the fallout. And there it is. He's tossing his body all around the room and screaming like I don't know what. After finally calming down he sweetly says "Ask me the other choices." I'd love to be able to come through on that, but the reality is that the other choices are just more Bob the Builder, or Jerry Springer, as we don't have cable.

Now Mango is looking at Jacob. Tantrum #4.

I'm sitting in the rocking chair, legs folded over with the computer on my lap. Jacob is approaching, climbing up the side, wanting to get into my lap. My skin is crawling so much from 3 continuous days of this constant haranguing that I don't think I can tolerate any kind of creature on any part of my body. "No, you can't come on my lap," I say because I would rather throw someone up against the wall right now than have his physical person anywhere near me.

Now we've had a few minutes of some nice snuggle time, and he's promised me for the second time today that he's not going to give me a hard time about anything else for the rest of the day. But of course by the time I finished that sentence, Jacob realized that I put the wrong yellow video cassette in the VCR. They all look alike. Normally this would be no big deal and I would just go get the correct one, but I just can't do it. Sometimes I need to prioritize my own needs over his. A 'put your own gas mask on first' kind of thing. Holy shit, he is still carrying on about the video. If I hear that whine again, I don't know what I'll do because there isn't a room in the house where I can stuff my face in a pillow and scream as loudly as I need to without being heard.

All of this makes me sound like a pushover and a bitch of a mom at the same time. The snuggling in the chair was needed, but first Jacob was able to sit for a full minute and let me finish what I was typing, so that was a nice compromise. And like I said the other day, I pick my battles. I know what I can tolerate, and what Jacob can get over without a major meltdown, and I try to balance those factors to come to compromises with him. He understands the compromise thing and when I do follow through with things I explain why I chose to so he learns the right way to treat people. I conversely explain why in the instances when I won't get whatever thing it is he wants. Yesterday when we left the house to go to the post office, a trip that took all of three hours to get ready for, Jacob politely asked me to go back in to get his pumpkin. Even though we were part way down the driveway, I saw that I had the chance to avoid a major meltdown and I knew how much it meant to him . I explained before I went back in to get the pumpkin that I was doing that because Jacob asked politely and I could tell it really meant a lot to him. I felt so satisfied with the way we both handled that - for about 30 seconds. I came back out with his real pumpkin, the thing he'd been carrying around for a couple weeks already. Logical choice, right? Well Jacob had wanted the cloth thing that he carried around on Halloween, filling with candy. That was out of the question. See he's got this thing lately where he puts innappropriate objects around his neck then pulls them tightly. I explain that it is very dangerous and take the offending object away. He knows he doesn't get it back after that. So yesterday morning it was the cloth pumpkin. I didn't realize that was the pumpkin he was asking for when I went back into the house, otherwise I wouldn't have gone to get it. So I came back out to the car with the wrong pumpkin and the fallout ensued.

Last night, for the third night in a row Jacob woke up vocalizing in this weird half-cry, half-scream that is possibly the most annoying sound in the world. Zach and I tried to comfort him, but like the other night where he wanted nothing to do with me, he wanted nothing to do with either of us this time. He just lays there in this tormented state kicking his legs around, not letting anyone near him. And I get really scared for him because he won't let himself be comforted. And we can't even really wake him up. He's just there is this half awake, half having-a-nightmare state. So I finally picked him up and held him tight. I told him I wouldn't let him go until he talked to me about what was wrong. I'm sure this was the worst thing to do, but what else could I have done? So he tried to pull away for a few minutes as I continued to rock him, and then finally came around to talking about it. I was so tired myself, that I really only remember the part about steam coming out of his nose. That's what he said, it didn't really happen. And then him telling me that he didn't want to say anything else about it, and I agreed that was fine, if we could talk more about it in the morning. Then Jacob crawled over to Zach and let himself be swayed to sleep.

I awoke this morning, in a good mood, at 10am to Jacob sweetly saying "Wake up, Mommy." Talk about waking up on the right side of the bed - for both of us. I can't remember the last time I slept that late. It was nice as we layed there talking about the middle-of-the-night trauma. The thing he recalls the most is that I wouldn't let him go, but he was sort of laughing about it, so that doesn't make me feel like as much of a monster as I did at 5am. But it just kills me that there is a part of his world I can't travel to with him, smoothing out all the rough patches as we go along. I suppose that is something I will have to get used to with increasing frequency.

Even though the morning started off well, the calm lasted only ten minutes. There have been so many 'issues' in the now 3 hours since we have been up, that most of them are already being pushed to the back of my mind. It started with the pancakes, and ended with my mom showing up at the door, like a savior, Heaven-sent, in the exact moment I was really about to lose it. I told her to take him away - which if you know me, you know is very unusual. I never want to be away from Jacob. Before she did, Jacob and I had a few minutes to ourselves to 'make-up'. This is something that is very important to me - to never leave angry. He and I snuggled on the couch, hugging and rubbing noses, patting each other on the back and exchanging our most recent term of endearment. "You my best mommy," he likes to say. "Well you're my best boy," I reply. We let go of all the resentments and absorbed as much positive energy as we could from each other. And then, even though I no longer wanted to, I let him go.